St Catherine's Church Audio Guide

St Catherine's Church: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to St Catherine's Church

   Welcome to Saint Catherine's Church, known in French as Église Sainte-Catherine and in Dutch as Sint-Katelijnekerk. You are in the heart of Brussels, on the square that carries the saint's name, in the district people call the Quays. Look up and you will see a vast church of dark blue stone with powerful buttresses and gargoyles, and a curious Italian-looking bell tower standing beside the entrance. Here is the first surprise. You are standing where ships once docked. This church was built on the site of a basin of the former Port of Brussels. Those who know the city only as a place of squares and chocolate shops might not guess that the water came this far in, but the church and the square around it are a legacy of that maritime past. Over the next few minutes we will follow the church from a modest medieval chapel to a nineteenth-century landmark. We will look at its architecture, at the compromise behind its design, and at the tower that survived when the old church did not. Getting here is easy, as the Sainte-Catherine metro station, on lines one and five, is right by the square.

2. 02

   From Riverside Chapel to Harbor Church

   The story starts small. Saint Catherine's probably began as a modest chapel dedicated to the saint, leaning against Brussels' first city walls on the left bank of the river Senne. It is mentioned from the year 1201 as a dependency of the parish of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. So this was once a little outpost, not a grand city church. The chapel was later replaced by a Gothic church, built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the seventeenth century a choir was added, and the Baroque bell tower was built between 1629 and 1664. That church stood beside a busy waterfront. A famous panoramic map of the city, engraved by Hogenberg and published in 1576, shows the Great Beguinage together with the Willebroek Canal and its basins, which had been built only about 15 years earlier. The water did not last. The Sainte-Catherine basin was the first to be filled in, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the church was rebuilt on the site of that former basin. The old church was replaced, and the market in front of the new building became one of the most important places in nineteenth-century Brussels.

3. 03

   Poelaert and the Belgian Compromise

   The man behind the present church is Joseph Poelaert, the architect of Brussels' enormous Palace of Justice. When he drew up Saint Catherine's, he was still working for the city. The building went up between 1854 and 1874, with Poelaert's disciple Wynand Janssens carrying the work forward. The design is a classic piece of what is called a Belgian compromise. Catholic groups wanted Gothic proportions, a church that soared like those of the Middle Ages. The city's liberal government, however, preferred something more austere. So the church has the Gothic proportions that were asked for, but its general architecture was kept much more restrained to please the authorities. Two sides each got part of what they wanted. The result is also historically unusual. It is the only new parish church built inside the Pentagon, the historic center of Brussels, since the end of the Ancien Régime. In that sense it was something of a last arrival among the old city's churches.

4. 04

   Blue Stone, Gargoyles and a Baroque Tower

   Now look closely at the building itself. It is eclectic in style, inspired by sixteenth-century French churches such as Saint-Eustache in Paris. Those churches combine a Gothic structure with Renaissance and Baroque decoration, and Brussels borrowed that blend. The massive base is blue stone, richly profiled, much like the base of the Palace of Justice, and it is punctuated by strong buttresses crowned with gargoyles. Then there is the tower. It looks Italian, a campanile, and it stands beside the entrance. It is in fact the Baroque steeple that once stood by the choir of the old church, which was demolished in 1893. It is the last remnant of the church that came before. The new building rose around the memory of the old one, and you can see both in the same glance. Another medieval survivor is close by on the square. The Black Tower is a medieval tower that now sits between the walls of a hotel. Together with the church, it shows how Brussels layers its centuries on top of each other.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Today the square around Saint Catherine's is a place for meeting and unwinding in the city center. It is known for its restaurants and its Christmas market, and the church stands at its edge like a steady witness to everything that has changed here. Before you move on, try standing at a distance and reading the building as a story. The Baroque tower comes from the old church. The blue stone, buttresses and gargoyles belong to the nineteenth-century compromise. And the open square in front of you is where harbor basins once held water. Notice how the open space feels different when you imagine it full of boats. If you want to keep exploring, the Black Tower beside the hotel is a short step away, and it adds another medieval chapter to the same neighborhood.